


Exits and Entrances

by nimrodcracker



Series: the long road [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Amnesiac Courier, Angst and Fluff - in that order, Explicit Language, Gen, Post-Game, Revised Version: 27/5/16, Violent Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, all you can do is watch a friend walk into the depths of hell and hope that she'll make it out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exits and Entrances

_Hey Miss Cass, thanks for sticking by my sis. She's never let anyone close, and sometimes I wonder if she even talks to people. Never took an interest in lovers, so you and me's all she's got, I guess. Anyway, could you try to get that woman to come home again? Ma refused to write back when Lola sent her a photograph of her in her nice First Recon dress uniform years ago, but I don't think she still hates her for running away from home to enlist. Or at least, not as bad as before._

_Got real worried when your caravans stopped coming a year back, cause I didn't know how else to reach Lola, even when her letters kept coming every couple of months, somehow. So when Cassidy Caravans made a ruckus back home again I didn't hesitate. Took you long enough, with the piles of letters I could never send without a return address._

_I can't thank you enough for everything, miss. Could you give my hapless sister the other letter in the envelope? With the things she writes in her letters, I don't know how she hasn't gone barking mad yet._

_Clear skies,_

_The other Nakamichi sister._

Loopy letters and clean strokes, the antithesis of the shit Six had on paper when the woman had to pick up a pen for whatever reason. Those words showed how the courier's sister behaved the total opposite of the blockhead, but that letter ain't something Cass wanted to see, not when it was the first reminder of what Six did a couple of months ago.

After the Dam, everything settled down for a bit in the Mojave without skirmishes between the loggerheads divided by the Colorado. But there were whispers of hope, that the Legion wasn't as stable as it seemed before, 'cause Caeser hadn't been seen by his troops as frequently as before. Rumours were rumours, sure - but this time, hearsay of Legion infighting stuck around longer than the regular crap the barkeeps dished out to make small talk.

The thunk of glass on wood shook her out of her reverie, and Cass looked up from the letter to see amber liquid swirl chaotically within the walls of the bottle. The barkeep raised an eyebrow at her, so Cass pushed a couple of caps across the tabletop, before taking a drawn-out swig of her ambrosia. Funny how after she'd saved the Mojave from creepy robots and madmen in skirts, everyone seemed to be gleefully tossin’ caps and more in her direction - and in this case, a discount for booze at this bar.

That, she could _definitely_ live with.

The whiskey seared through her system like it always did, summoning the foggy warmth that tingled her fingers, but not enough to muddle up her thoughts still mired in the past. Good memories too, thank the stars and the stupid moon for that.

Boone had re-enlisted with his old unit after a month or so of dithering, probably deciding that waiting for Legion fuckwits to knock him off his rocker couldn't come soon enough. Ronnie was the one she'd quietly worried about, what with dead civvies and all manner of shit thrown the woman's way, but the scribe was helpin' Gannon with the Followers, and happily at that. As for herself, poor ol' sod with a liver soaked in drink, she pushed out caravans out into the East day by day, and her pockets had begun to jangle with caps again.

Everything seemed perfect, except for one glaring detail - the 'lil shit that started it all wasn't out of the meat grinder yet.

It was on a rare, rainy night close to a few months ago when Cass found out that Six had left again on her own like the self-sacrificing dumbass she was. Nothing, not even the tales of dust hurricanes and rad storms, could stop that woman from trying to get back whatever memories she lost when she took two shots to the head in that cemetery.

**

It was one of those rare days; when sheets of rain were all Cass saw beyond glass windows, where she could actually think straight in the hours just before dawn without yesterday's drink dulling her senses - or waking up in an unfamiliar bed with warmth pressed into her side, for that matter.

She'd spent some time at her favourite spot in the deserted cocktail lounge, watching the sun rise over the craggy rocks of Red Rock Canyon. It had been the asinine thought that such sights could inspire her that had her sittin' there in the first place, but she gave up eventually. Clutching her plans, Cass hurried into Pre-War elevators and along musty corridors in search of that one person who had the knack for solving the impossible.

She simply lacked the caps to launch her caravan business again, and she had no idea on how to pull those caps out of thin air. Everything had been worked out - the Brahmin, the guards, the administrative schmoozy, the contracts - but she just felt like something else was missing from it all.

Couple o' empty rooms later, she wasn't worried yet, because _maybe_ Six was in the dining hall havin' coffee with Santangelo or making another one of her ridiculously delicious omelettes. In another life, Six could've been a chef at the Gourmand or so, except for the fact that omelettes were the only decent things Six could cook on a stovetop that wouldn't stink of ash after.

Cass pushed open the door of the kitchen, hoping to see the courier at the stove, but the only thing that met the redhead's gaze was the sight of an ex-Brotherhood scribe slumped on the massive dining table, head delicately cradled in her hands.

Doubt nipped at her heels, snarlin’ like those mongrels the cheerleaders _loved_ as pets. She stood rigid, one feet in and one feet out of the room, suddenly preoccupied with quashing her growing unease. Not like that was goddamn difficult - couple of 20 gauge rounds to the head and the dogs would explode like overripe fruit.   

Santangelo's irritated groans filled the silence and Cass joined in too, the mental picture of flying gore wrecked in a blink. Trust her to wake the slumbering fire gecko even if she ain't wanted to.

“Where's Six?”

“Dunno,” Santangelo mumbled, voice muffled by layers of cloth. “Stop dragging the chair, my ears hurt.”

“Didn't see her anywhere?”

A beat, then another. Cass waited in silence.   

Finally, a snore.

Cass poked Santangelo in the temple, and the scribe jerked awake with a yelp. 

“ _Nope._ ” Santangelo shot back with a dirty look that stank worse than molerat piss. “So please _go away_ and let me snooze in peace.”

Strange, Cass thought to herself, as she took slow steps out of the kitchen and into the room she shared with Six and Santangelo. One, Six usually spent her mornings reading some Pre-War book with a steaming mug of coffee at the huge dining table. Two, that woman usually left a note or somethin’ somewhere if she went away for some reason, being all considerate and what not. Three, Six wasn't in her bed when Cass left to stare at clouds way too early in the morning.

Looking around the room, the only signs of habitation lay in the rumpled sheets on Santangelo's bed and the paraphernalia piled on the mahogany writing desk in another corner, close to the cluster of couches at the side.

“Do I feel like turning the whole of this building on its ass looking for that blasted woman?”

In that instant, her stomach growled, dull and insistent and _demanding_.

“Hell _no._ ”

She would've hurried back to the kitchen, eager to get some Brahmin steak sizzling on a hotplate, if not for the woven bag she noticed on the coffee table. Perked her interest too, ‘cause of the numerous bulges that screamed _caps_ at her.

Till she began reading the little slip of paper wedged between the twine that tied the bag shut, she thought she knew what emptiness felt like; numb, dull _throbbing_ that sucked the warmth from her fingers.

Two sentences in Six's trademark scrawl, yet more words than necessary to tell Cass what she needed to know. She didn't flinch, nor put a fist through a wall because it wouldn't help anyone, only force her to visit Doc Usanagi and annoy the _shit_ out of sleeping scribe with the noise.

No, she wasn't angry. Not at all.

She heard the scrunch of paper in her fist before a slip of paper fell from her other fist to the pristine carpet floor - no matter that the papers she'd just crushed were the plans for a caravan business she would go through hell and back to have again. Strangle a few deathclaws with her bare hands, if need be.

Not angry. Not angry at all.

On a whim, she flung the paper balls in her grasp against the wall. Whether they bounced off the walls meant Brahmin shit to her, ‘cause she was already stomping out of the room.

She should've seen this coming, the way Six'd been discreetly hoarding bullets and little cans of Cram, but she hadn’t. She thought the duffle bag by Six's bed was a dumping ground for knick-knacks the woman wanted to send back home, and she'd been flat-out _duped_.

Yeah, of _course_ she wasn't angry.

Santangelo didn't bother her with pesky questions when Cass dropped her sorry arse on a chair beside the scribe. The woman was awake, sure, if lolling her head back and forth with half-lidded eyes counted. ‘S far as Cass was concerned, the scribe was better off bein' sleepy and unaware for now. Who knew what careless words would spark off the inexplicable dynamite of thoughts in Cass' skull, leaving her with split knuckles that bled and wood splinters lying all around?

Cass groaned into her hands, rubbing her palms on her face for good measure. Who was she kidding? She needed a drink. Probably a few cases this time. Of _Absinthe_ , not whiskey.

The next time she dared peek through a gap she cracked between her fingers, Santangelo was shovelling lumps of InstaMash into her mouth. Long ago in some dusty outpost, Six had done _exactly_ that, albeit without the moaning and ghastly table manners.

 _I know you'll want to have my sorry hide whipped for leaving you hanging_ \- Cass swore the looping words in her mind were _mocking_ her - _but it's the only way, Cass. It's something I need to do alone._

“Seriously. _Screw_ that lady to hell and back, if hell even existed in the first place.”

“Who rubbed you the wrong way this time, old lady? It's barely eight.”

Cass locked gazes with the scribe. “Haven't decided yet, but my gut's tellin' me she's right _there,_ eating _InstaMash_.”

**

Being a caravan boss ain't easy, contrary to what the Followers in her circle of friends thought. ( _Fuck_ what Gannon thought - three people could make a circle). There was the cargo that needed sorting, the people to iron out before they made asses of themselves, and the fuckload of clearance and whatnot for everything since she dabbled in cross-border deliveries.

If it ain’t for the occasional caravan runs she personally led, she figured she would've gone cuckoo by now, dealin' with all the bureaucratic fuck-ups everywhere.

At least she sat on a shitload of caps now. Sometimes, she'd accidentally 'lose' 'em to random urchins off the streets - in Freeside, West and East Vegas, or even Novac - but she usually passed on the extras to her own people. Kindness was a two-way street, some said. Treat others right and they'd do the same.

As for her own stash, she'd spend it on drink, bottle after bottle, and the rates she'd been offered at every bar in the damned Mojave weren't doin’ a favour for her liver at all.

She wasn't angry, just thirsty. That definitely warranted a couple of bottles from Lacey's secret stash of high-quality swill. Looking at the letter in her hands though, maybe she’d mix in a bit of Atomic Cocktail for kicks. Today was the anniversary of Six’s disappearance, so why the hell not? And yeah, she was _just_ thirsty.

Three shot glasses later, Cass had to bite her tongue - _hard_ \- to stifle the urge to smash something.

For all she knew, Six could be dead and buried with all the corpses in the rad-filled hellhole of the Divide. _How the fuck_ was she supposed to tell her _sister_?

She'd been staring at her filled glass, thoughts drowning in the murky depths of her drink, so she didn't hear the Outpost’s doors swing open with ugly creaks. Sunlight briefly flooded the dimly-lit bar, but it was enough for her to start at the glorious amber sheen of her drink. She hadn't had the foggiest on why the NCR grunts liked doing things in the dark, but at least it meant she couldn't see the spots of grime in her glass.

The _thump-thump_ of booted feet on cracked tiles echoed in the general quiet. Wasn't she familiar with this particular way rubber soles struck stone?

 _Whatever_. Her drink was begging to be gulped down.

Cass caught the whiff of gun oil the moment someone called out for a bottle of Absinthe at the bar. She couldn't see shit though; her drinking glass was in her face as she knocked back the last dregs of her booze.

When she clinked her glass on the countertop a little too unkindly, she didn't expect to see _someone_ again, much less the very reason for her excesses in that moment.

That _someone's_ face was tinged red with the sting of sunburn and rad exposure, but aside from the ill-effects of dust storms, the face that stared back at her was no different than the one from a few years ago - _dorky_ gambler’s hat with a feather stuck to a side and _infuriatingly_ soft smile and all.

“Hey, you a caravan merchant? I need to send money back to the Republic.”

Cass didn't do that _someone_ the courtesy of a reply, just a bunched fist hurled straight at that _someone's_ jaw. A _considerate_ blow, since she deliberately aimed for that _someone’s_ unblinded side.

Six reeled from the blow, gingerly rubbing dust-coated cheeks with bandaged hands. Her fingers lingered on the straps of her eyepatch; touching, testing if they’d hold. “Guess I deserved it, eh?”

Cass rolled her eyes. “You have no _fucking_ idea.”

Six had the grace to look sheepish before reaching for her pack. Still was, when she dumped a pouch of caps on the gray countertop.

Cass moved to grab the bag with stiff hands but stopped, remembering the envelope leaning on her glass, fat and brown and important all the same.

She handed the manila packet over wordlessly, refusing to match Six's perplexed gaze because she didn't know what to feel more - the urge to _throttle_ the woman, or to be ridiculously _glad_ that Six came back in one piece. That puppy-dog look would be the death of her, the scrunched eyebrows and the quiver in her bottom lip that would liquefy her steely resolve and turn her into a dirtbag puddle of feelings, even when distance and time told her that what Six did was a fuckload of _unacceptable_.

But like how it always went, it didn't take long before the rage dried up, leaving nothing but overwhelming relief. The jangle of caps from the pouch in her hands helped, being reassuring and somewhat distracting all at once.

Maybe it was the uncanny silence of someone so viciously vocal on her bad days or the uncomplicated fury oozing off her in waves that made Six straighten up a bit from readin' the letter from her sis.

“Hey, can we start over? I'm Eola. Eola Nakamichi, but you can call me Six _._ ”

The woman was doing it again, lookin' at her with those blasted eyes that screamed _vulnerability_ under that wall of stoicism and lighthearted banter.  

Six had vanished for a whole _year_ on some goddamn leisure walk to the Divide and more, yet the woman dared to waltz in here and back into her life like nothing had changed at all. Right now, Cass didn't feel that generous, friend or not, because some scars cut too deep to be glossed over in a heartbeat.

“Hi, Rose of Sharon Cassidy's my name. You're still one pigheaded little fuck, but I forgive you.”

She probably just did something she'd regret in a few years or so, but like the last, it had been so fucking worth it.

And just like how it all began, Six flashed her a megawatt smile that brightened up the whole _damned_ room.


End file.
